Kind of a trend, the amount of youtubers who i had loved but their content became generic after gaining popularity is quite a bit, most drastic one being mrwhosetheboss, his uniqueness went down faster than MH27 MH17
Linus Tech Tips.
They were pretty good in the beginning but the drive to create more and more output diminished the quality of the individual vids. Hence, the latest controversy.
To be fair, they dragged their feet on addressing it, sure, but then took massive steps to address it when they did. Top-to-bottom company-wide analysis and restructuring, limiting Linus’ role and voice, a complete moratorium on releasing videos while they made plans to slow the release output, and refocusing on quality-control with additional community input. Totally get if you still don’t like their videos, but I think they did everything possible to address everyone’s concerns.
I actually like the WAN Show podcast more than their videos. I think you get a sense for their genuineness and passion as they discuss current tech news…
Still waiting on the internal investigation results.
Yeah, willing to give them a second chance, but very much want this to be addressed first.
Did Linus ever really apologize for the “we didn’t sell the prototype we auctioned it” comment. I only saw him make excuses about miscommunication (blaming the company that lent the prototype). Or apologize to Gamers Nexus for saying they didn’t do “real” testing?
I only saw a long corporate speak “we will do better” video.
Hard to cite sources at the moment, I’m on mobile. From what I remember, both of those things ended up being a little bit overblown.
Prototype company had initially said that they could keep it. There was still a goof, as LTT said they would send it back, but it makes the logistics mix up a little more understandable.
The kinds of testing that the two different channels do are very different. I do think it was disingenuous to say Tech Jesus didn’t do real testing. But also, if they were as close as they said they were before this whole thing, he could also have called up Linus and called them on their slapdash bullshit on the phone.
And nothing has been released about that internal investigation. But that wouldn’t be the first time they promised to do something and didn’t. In this case, it’s highly possible investigation is still going on. Once it’s finished, they may even be legally barred from making the results public (IANAL). Either way, if it is truly being conducted by an important 3rd party, they’re doing the right thing.
Prototype company had initially said that they could keep it.
That was the lie that Linus told that got me to stop watching LTT. The company sent Gamers Nexus the email chain where they clearly had been asking for it back and got the run around until it was auctioned. Then Linus had the gall to say, “We didn’t sell it, it was auctioned.”
LTT is a big company. Mistakes were made. But instead of saying, we screwed up they tried to blame the prototype company when it wasn’t their fault at all.
I only saw a long corporate speak “we will do better” video.
Linus didn’t have a direct apology to the prototype company. He blamed them for his auctioning off their prototype. Saying, [sic] “Sorry, you made a mistake and we didn’t follow through correctly.” isn’t a real apology.
The company responded by sending the email chain to Gamers Nexus to prove their side of the story.
So you didn’t watch the video, or pay attention to the part I linked to.
Finally I want to apologise to Billet Labs for auctioning off their monoblock at LTX 2023.
Literally verbatim from that video, followed by some further explanation about what happened.
Is it a sufficient apology? Maybe not. But to say they didn’t apologise is completely false.
GN August 14th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc&t=108s breaks story
Linus claims Billet said we could keep it and we didn’t sell it we auctioned it.
Linus defends his “we didn’t sell it we auctioned it” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY&t=948s by saying its important to get all the details.
However the details, as Linus already knew, was that Billet asked for it back 2 weeks earlier, they lost track of it and sold it.
Linus response August 14th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cTpTMl8kFY&t=948s claims they offered to pay for it before they were under any pressure
GN August 15th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso&t3m54s Billet labs shows email chain they didn’t receive a response until after GN video was released and LTT was under pressure.
Billets email chain shows that they asked for it back long before it was sold. Linus claims they offered to pay for it before being pressured. Billet labs email chain shows they didn’t receive an offer until after GN’s videos hit the news.
Which didnt negate the fact that Linus apologized.
Not that it matters, it was a shit thing to do.
Linus Tech Tips …
Click baity as heck and most of the content are just ads or have misleading information.
The clickbait is what gets me.
The video is covering the Toughbook CF-19 but it’s not mentioned in the title and the thumbnail looks like generic YouTube trash and makes me not want to watch it out of principle.
Unfortunately, the stupid thumbnail and clickbait title is by design. Linus has spoken about this long before the latest controversy, but unfortunately they do increase views.
I’m fact, they trial different titles and monitor which brings in more views - if you catch a video early enough, you’ll probably notice the title change a few hours later as they trial different ones. So as frustrating as it is, it’s a symptom of the platform and the market at large.
For all of Linus’ flaws and mistakes, he’s generally a good businessman and make no mistake, LMG is a business at the end of the day. Put yourself in his shoes, is he going to do the thing that will get him 1,000 views but put off 1 person, or appeal to that 1 person but lose 1,000 views? It sucks, he been vocal about how much he also hates it, but it is what it is. His goal is to grow his business, at least he’s up front about it.
I’m not completely defending Linus as an individual here, he’s definitely fucked up a lot (especially lately), he still thinks he’s a “little YouTuber” and doesn’t appreciate how much sway he has, how his words can destroy an entire business overnight - the very thing his own company was nearly hit by several times in the past when he was small - but the clickbait and thumbnails aren’t something I think he should be blamed for, he’s just playing the YouTube game and if I was in his position, I’d do the same.
I used to watch iilluminaughtii several years ago, probably because I’ve been grabbing popcorn and enjoying watching someone dunking on multi-level marketing since, uh, 90s at least. Then I watched some video that was about some topic that I was kind of in middle of a deep dive, too (I can’t remember which exactly. Elan School, probably?). And the video was bland as hell. And then I was like “yeah, most of these other videos are kind of forgettable shallow pap too”.
…and this year we found out about the whole landlordy corporate town fancier backstabby financial abuser helicopter-CEO situation. And the content mill situation. And the plagiarism thing. Can’t forget the plagiarism thing. …I was like, “oh this all just makes sense now.”
Illuminaughtii was getting pushed into my feed so hard right before everything went down that I’ve started to cast side-eye on anyone that the algorithm starts to push hard.
On the plus side, I found Cruel World Happy Mind because of all the awful stuff Illuminaughtii did to her.
Lock picking lawyer.
Used to be a channel about how locks works, how lock picking works, cool locks and shitty locks.
Now it’s just a channel to sell his tools.
Eh, I would have to disagree with this, I have been watching him for a while and as far as I can tell the quality is the same the only difference now days is that he mentions his tools in the videos while picking the locks, so the videos didn’t even really get longer.
Agreed. Before it would be “so I made this tool by filing down this other thing, you can probably make one yourself” to “I used this tool that you can get in my shop, and here’s how to pick it with a few standard tools as well…”
Feels like it’s mostly because there’s not much to talk about anyway, whatever needed to be said has already been said in one of his 1.5k video. I start follow his channel before he established his company, it’s mostly the same and it’s really just about how he defeat the lock. He sometimes still talk about unique lock he find interesting though.
I stopped watching when he started covert instruments and immediately realized what every single future video would be like. I was right…
Can’t believe he wants to profit from his hobby. What a piece of shit.
Can’t believe I don’t want to watch advertisements all day
LPL mentions Covert Instruments once in his 1 minute video
Day ruined
pants shit in
Man picks lock with skill and tools, not allowed to mention he also sells tools? Shit that would knock out so many YouTubers… LawrenceSystems, NetworkChuck, Level1Techs, pretty much anyone who does electronics or home automation…
Cinema Sins. Used to be 5 minute videos pointing out continuity errors or over-use of something (Iron Man 2 Bird Bonus Round) but then bloated into 20 minutes of nit picky bull crap.
I have the opposite problem where Youtubers who I watch because I enjoy their unedited, off-the-cuff content keep deciding to put more effort into their channel and start producing videos that are scripted and edited well, which I find way less interesting and watchable than their stream-of-consciousness rambling was. WolfeyVGC is a big one. He theoretically has a second channel for low effort content but he rarely posts to it.
You might like Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t if you like that style of video. It’s a crass low brow approach to botany and ecology presented by a Chicago Italian. Been going for years now and has improved his quality but it’s still off the cuff rambling.
VSauce. They used to be THE shit years and years ago. Their content now has been… Rather sparce and uninteresting.
I don’t mind content that takes a long time. Ahoy and Lemmino are great. But VSauce just became… Feeling like a waste of time.
Seems like they never recovered after the whole YouTube Red exclusive stuff they did. I was glad they came back, but you’re right, it just doesn’t hit the same.
